The Very Thin Man

Tom here—a man of few words. I just came by to help her out. That’s ok—I can do that. It’s like a wiring job. She had all these feelings still–all this mushy love stuff. But she had it wired wrong. So it was confusing her. She was thinking it was attached to another guy. Well, that wasn’t working. So she called me. She asked me to take it on, so here I am.

She’ll have all these feelings–like she’ll wish she had an email, or that he’d be next to her when she rolled over in the morning. She’ll worry about him, or she’ll get all lovey. So now I’m here—she can say “oh, that’s Tom. That’s just him. He doesn’t always think to email” or “he had to leave early this morning.”

Talk about warm fuzzies—that’s what I get all the time. That’s the whole thing from my side. She seems to feel better and then she just goes about her business. Me? Well I guess I go about mine, too. I just wait until she might need me the next time.

What about when she’s done with me? Will I be sad? lonely? resentful? Naw. It’s not like that, at all. Don’t get me wrong—I’m no martyr. I’ll just fade away, maybe not even a memory. Just a name.

You know, you hear people fuss about “what’s in a name. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, but what if there was no rose, no flower, no girl named Rose, no nothing? Just an R and an O and then an S and an E. What’s that? Just a name. Like T O M

It’s sorta like if a tree falls in the forest and your name comes thundering out of the ground, shaking the birds and the worms and the little critters in the soil, was it there a minute before? Prob’ly not. When did it get there—when the tree fell or in my case, when she felt a little winsome.

I’m just here as long as she thinks “That’s just Tom.” Then she’s happy to have me there—her sweet little figment. Whatever. That’s cool.